Thread 724847034

very interesting game. piecemeal storytelling and dynamite gameplay. unfortunately, the level design makes it unplayable without infinite lives ("free play" in the old arcade parlance) which consequently takes...really all of the challenge out.
so there really is no in-between, either you play with 1-5 lives per chapter or you play the whole game with infinite lives and just wonder how the fuck anyone is supposed to navigate these obstacles and how anyone thought dying repeatedly would be fun.
i'm so down on this game i dont even view it as a skill-based game or something possible with perfect knowledge, its just an explosion simulator with some strangely esoteric lore dropped between levels/stage transitions. i "beat" it twice just to screenshot them all. i like everything here besides the level design, which is unfortunately about 90% of the ikaruga experience.
very strange game. dunno how to recommend it to anyone.

at any given point 50-100% of the "bullets" onscreen reward you for touching them so the only thing resembling challenge is remembering when the camera tries ramming you into walls

>>724847034 (OP)
ikaruga is overrated shmup by propped up by retards who never played a single shmup
It's not a strange game, it's just a mediocre slop

Your supposed to play it over and over and improve over time. The level design is actually brilliant because it gives you a good variety of challenges to adapt to with no filler at all. Its perfectly efficient design.

We had a fine shmup thread yesterday that lived to get more replies than the shmup general on /vr/ gets in a week despite someone dumping like 300 reddit frog threads a minute and it didn't need any schizophrenic bait or bumps or anything.

>>724847826
This video is like orgasm denial or something
Why not kakusei for longer

>>724848792
Because it's the rape hallway right before the 10 minute long final boss and if you pay attention you can see just leaving it on for like 5 seconds drains 200 gems because there's so much shit everywhere.

>>724848884
iirc you kinda stop shooting and single tap single bitches as they start filling the screen
It's been a while though

Man Espgaluda fucking slaps

>>724848942
>iirc you kinda stop shooting and single tap single bitches as they start filling the screen
That's what I did in the webm both times

>>724849017
I mean I just think you can do it for longer
It depends on whether or not it costs more gems to wait for the screen to fill back up or to toggle out of kakusei and back in
I've been playing a lot of 2 lately and I think it costs more to toggle kakusei in that game so my scales are probably off

>>724847034 (OP)
>unfortunately, the level design makes it unplayable without infinite lives
Zoomers are so fucking bad at videogames, holy shit

>>724849131
>I mean I just think you can do it for longer
You cannot, what I did there was just enough to enter the boss fight with 300ish gems which is just barely enough to get to the third boss form without taking a death. The only way around this is to abuse overmode, but unlike the sequel it doesn't persist through death and there's not many opportunities to set this up so it's not worth it outside of a scoring run, and this is a survival run.

>>724847034 (OP)
just 1CC sister

Ikaruga has been on my backlog since forever but I've never gotten around to it because been playing Radiant Silvergun on-and-off for years. It's so fucking good bros. If Ikaruga compares then I don't think I'll need any other vidya for the rest of my life

>>724847034 (OP)
I'm confused. What difficulty are you playing on? Easy difficulty ends at Stage 2, Normal difficulty only sees enemies of the matching color return fire when destroying, and it's only with Hard difficulty where all enemies return fire when destroyed. While the game's flipping-polarity system can be hard to bend your head around, especially with bosses spraying alternating color patterns, but beyond that stages tend to be pretty easy. If you're playing on Normal, it should be mostly trivial to stay on one polarity and just blast thru everything to get to the end.

How are you dying?

Also, if the goal is to just get to the ending: Congratulations, you've beaten the game. If you want more of a challenge, then try beating the game without any continues. As I mentioned above, that isn't hard outside bosses, and learning the boss patterns to beat them is the challenge. Hard mode is much more difficult doing that (since all enemies return fire upon being destroyed) altho you can also you can also take the challenge of not shooting enemies, just avoiding them, or going for scoring by only killing enemies in matching sets of 3 of the same color.

The nice thing about Ikaruga is that you can just be done at any point you want. If you're happy with spamming continues, then congrats at beating the game. If you don't find that satisfying and want more challenge, then you still have plenty of options.

>>724847034 (OP)
Overrated game aside, you are going in with the wrong mindset.
Arcade and arcade-likes aren't about trying to "beat" the game asap, you are supposed to slowly but surely build your way towards higher scores and eventually 1cc, since the latter is often a requirement to not reset your score on continuning.
Things like infinite lives/free play exist for you to practice the more difficult parts, or if you are using an emulator/modern port then you can skip straight to that through save states.
The final goal is to stop playing once your are satisfied with your results, I would recommend trying to 1cc at least because that's what allows you to appreciate level design, among other things.